Historical figure
Suzanne Karpelès
Suzanne Karpelès (born 1890) was a French scholar of Pali and Khmer texts who ran the Royal Library in Phnom Penh and helped found the Buddhist Institute.[1][2]
Early life and training
Karpelès was born in Paris in 1890. She grew up largely in Calcutta with her sister Andrée, and both sisters spoke Bengali and Hindi. In 1917 she became the first woman to graduate from the school of oriental studies in Paris.[1] She studied Buddhism at the École pratique des hautes études under Sylvain Lévi, Alfred Foucher and Louis Finot.[2][3]
Early career
She joined the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in 1922 as its first woman full member.[1][3] By one account she reached Hanoi in 1923 and began research there on Pali texts. She visited Cambodia and Thailand in 1923 and Angkor in 1924.[3]
Royal Library
In 1925 she moved to Phnom Penh to study old Khmer and Pali manuscripts, and she became the first curator of its Royal Library, which later became the National Library.[1] Her tours of the provinces brought the library gifts of manuscripts once scattered among the pagodas, and she gave talks and showed films there. A press article of 1927 or 1928 counted 6,598 readers over eight and a half months, 3,640 of them monks. The library also published a monthly review, Kampuchea Sorya (កម្ពុជសុរិយា).[4] One account gives her post as curator from 1925 to 1936;[3] another says she directed both the library and the Buddhist Institute until 1941.[2]
Buddhist Institute
In 1930 she helped found Buddhist Institutes in Cambodia and Laos and served as secretary of both,[3] among them the Institutes in Vientiane and Luang Prabang.[2] She pressed for Buddhist texts to be printed, and she worked with reforming Khmer monks, among them Chuon Nath (ជួន ណាត) and Huot Tath.[2] Her teaching at the Institute helped form both men, each later Supreme Patriarch.[1] An undated magazine account says the Institute published Cambodia's first Buddhist journal, ran a traveling library and began the commission for the great Khmer dictionary.[5]
Dismissal and later years
From 1936 she was secretary of the EFEO.[3] In 1941 the Vichy government fired her for being Jewish.[2][3] That year she was among 15 Jews in Cambodia who lost their posts, and Admiral Decoux placed her on compulsory retirement.[1] She was reinstated in 1945 by one account[1] and in 1946 by others.[2][5] After the war she worked again for the EFEO in Hanoi, and she was in India from 1946 to 1948.[3]
In 1955 she retired to Pondicherry, India, where she taught French at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.[2] She gave much of her library to the scholar Paul Mus, and part of it is held by the Library of Congress, among it 16 Khmer and Pali manuscripts in 42 volumes.[2]
References 5
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Angkor Database, Suzanne Karpelès (undated)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Ryan Wolfson-Ford, From the Library of Suzanne Karpelès, Library of Congress, International Collections blog (May 27, 2024)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Klaus Karttunen, KARPELÈS, Suzanne, Persons of Indian Studies (February 16, 2017, updated January 31, 2026)
- ↑ G.-H. Monod, La Bibliothèque royale du Cambodge, Revue du Pacifique, scan hosted by AEFEK (1927 or 1928)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Cambodge Mag, Suzanne Karpelès, the Frenchwoman who gave Cambodia back the keys to its own texts (undated)
Know something we're missing? Send a tip